We appreciate that a federal judge has correctly struck down an effort in California to sidestep the Second Amendment by placing undue limitations on how many firearms law-abiding Americans can purchase in a month.

The judge noted Supreme Court precedent clearly protects the right to purchase the firearms that the Second Amendment acknowledges Americans have the right to own and bear.

“When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct,” the Supreme Court decision upon which the ruling is based, as reported by Reason magazine, said.

“To justify its regulation, the government may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest. Rather, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

“California’s law is facially unconstitutional because possession of multiple firearms and the ability to acquire firearms through purchase without meaningful constraints are protected by the Second Amendment,” Judge Danielle J. Forrest wrote in the most recent decision, as also reported by Reason.

Our nation’s liberties are often threatened by erosion. As we have noted in past editorials, the erosion of the Second Amendment is not a matter that can be viewed in isolation or as a different breed of encroachment from our other cherished liberties — for any effort to curtail the right to keep and bear arms, to ever actually work in any practical way, would necessitate erosions of due process, of freedom of expression, of nearly all of our Constitutionally protected rights.

The interconnected nature of our liberties is, in large part, why even Americans who are skeptical of the merits of owning firearms should defend the rights of their neighbors to do so. And it’s why the ruling by the Ninth Circuit’s Court of Appeals to protect the right to purchase guns free of an arbitrary limitation should be celebrated by all Americans.

— Williamsport Sun-Gazette